Relock your iPhone to avoid an iBrick, but tread carefully

For those who don't follow the front page of Ars, Apple confirmed our earlier report by stating yesterday that this month's promised firmware update could likely make unlocked iPhones permanently inoperable. Naturally, those who journeyed down this path are likely biting their nails at this point, wondering how to avoid a $600 $400 paperweight. Unfortunately, you can't simply use iTunes' Restore feature to wipe an iPhone back to factory defaults—both the commercial and freely available iPhone unlocking hacks deal with a completely different set of firmware in your phone (baseband firmware, for those curious).

If you really want to take a stab at relocking your iPhone, though, hacker extraordinaire Erica Sadun at TUAW has laid out a few steps that just might work—heavy on the "just might." The reason it should (heavy on the "should") work is because the instructions force a manual update of the baseband firmware, something that wouldn't otherwise happen if you're just trying to restore to the previous firmware through iTunes. Please note that there are no guarantees here that this method will work (just like with unlocking an iPhone to begin with), as users are reporting mixed results with the attempt.

Erica also links another possible solution at iPhoneGoBoom.com, which involves a new app called iBrickr and juggling of a few iPhone base system files. Again, proceed with extreme caution when trying this stuff, but be sure to sound off if you have any success (or unfortunate failure) with relocking your iPhone. This is uncharted territory for everyone (including even Apple, according to the language they used in yesterday's statement), so you might simply want to keep an eye on efforts before and after the firmware update actually lands to see if the iPhone hacking community can pin down a more solid unlocking/relocking method.